In Life there is only Wind and Smoke
by algie888
Summary: "Now she's gone, my heart with her, how am I meant to love the baby? She took everything from me when she left me! I can't see for the darkness, can't hear for the silence, can't speak for the fact she can never hear my words! How am I meant to go about, day by day, when my daughter, her living replica, rips out my heart by simply standing there?"


**A/N: I churned this out in about an hour. Because I have all the feels with this couple. And I needed to write this. Badly. **

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"Shut up!" Tom yelled, throwing the swaddling cloth across the room, where it landed in the arms of his surprised daughter. "Why won't you just shut up?"

She recoiled from him, evidently surprised by his outburst. He lunged towards her, staring into her blue eyes (_her _blue eyes) with a desperate edge, as though searching for some meaning to his life. She burst out tearfully, her yell loud against the deathly silence of the night.

"Why won't you just shut up?" Tom snarled, turning away. Tears filled his eyes, flooding, when he looked at the bed, empty and cold, the faintest imprint of her body still on the sheets, the only thing keeping him from thinking that it was all some sick, twisted dream.

The baby curled her lip, and wailed again, causing Tom to hiss in frustration, whipping back around to her. "Why won't you shut up and go to sleep? Why?" he yelled, louder than the baby, and very probably waking up the rest of the house. He latched onto the mantle, contorting his face as the tears pooled. "Why won't you shut up?" he asked again, quietly, the words forced and broken, pleading.

"She just wants her mother, sir," said a voice, and Tom turned around. Cora stood there, along with a woman he had never seen before, smiling benignly at the baby.

"Tom, this is the nursemaid," Cora murmured, her eyes red. Were his eyes red? They probably were. Tom used to care whether or not her cried, whether or not he showed emotion. There was no emotion left to show now, not with her.

"Everyone wants her mother," he replied to the maid, and nodded once to Cora. "Can I just be alone for a while? Please?"

The women nodded in time (Sybil never would have done that. She was his rebel, his heart), and left the room. Tom pretended not to hear the sobbing before the heavy oak door closed on him.

Tom gave an anguished yell, turning around quickly on his heels so that the room spun before his eyes. Was this what she saw, in her final moments? Did her life flash before her eyes? Or was it a simply a welcome back to darkness, warmth and safety? Tom envied her so much- he almost hated her. Hated Sybil for leaving, hated her for dying, hated her for not staying with him. Hated her for not running away with him when they had the chance, back in that car to Gretna Green.

He ran a sweaty hand down his face, feeling it sting his eyes and let salt leak into his mouth. He might hate her more, but he'd never love her less. And love would be what would stay with him, love would be what would comfort him in his darkest hours. Love, and her memory.

Baby had stopped crying now, and blinked up at him with large blue eyes, almost too big for her head. Tom reached for her, wrapping her up in the white cloth, and pressed her to him, feeling the fluttering of her heart through the fabric. She turned, and let out a contented gurgle. So beautiful.

"You look just like her," he murmured, biting down hard on his lower lip. "You've got her eyes, and her smile, and her hair. Maybe even her voice," Tom said, and sat down onto the chair, feeling her warm and alive in his arms. "I loved her voice."

"We all did," commented Matthew, entering the room unnoticed. Tom didn't turn around, still hunched over the baby as though to shield her from the world's unhappiness.

"I said I wanted to be left alone," Tom said, his voice a monotone. There was no point in bothering to put emotion into words now that she couldn't hear them. There was no point in having emotions anymore if she couldn't receive them.

"I know," he replied, and sat down beside him on the bed, bumping shoulders with him. Tom didn't look away from the baby- perhaps, if he stared at her for long enough, this would all be a dream. When he stood there with his daughter in his arms, he felt empowered. If he looked at Matthew, that dream would crumble away, and he would have to wake up again.

"Please, leave me alone," Tom begged, curling his fingers around the baby, sinking deep into the comfort of the warm fabric of swaddling cloth. The baby smelt of milk, and innocence. He did not want to let her go, ever. He would shroud her from misery, from despair, and from the painful destruction that was love.

"I am so sorry for your loss," he murmured, wrapping an arm around Tom to shake him slightly. "She was very dear to me, too." After a long moment of no answers, Matthew stood to leave, giving the baby one last smile.

"I'm a Catholic," Tom said abruptly, and Matthew stopped.

"My good man, what has that anything to do with it?"

"I believed in God for so very, very long. I was training to be a man of the cloth when I was younger, and almost made it, too," Tom said, the words simply tumbling from his lips without reason, like a torrent of rain.

"I'm not a good man, Matthew. Not at all. I fought in streets, I had bar brawls, argued with politicians, stole for a while when I was younger," Tom admitted, and Matthew sat back down again to listen, his warmth supporting Tom in ways the man could never have ever imagined. "But when I found Sybil, I thought that, somehow, I had done something good in one of my past lives. Saved a nun from a burning building, maybe. Sybil was my sun, Matthew. And without her, I'm blind."

Matthew reached out to clasp Tom's free hand, squeezing it slightly. "I feel that way for Mary," he said, "and sometimes I think that she takes my breath away from me when she leaves the room."

"Sybil stole my heart from me the moment we met, and it beats in her chest now," Tom said, and his expression tightened. "Used to beat in her chest."

"Tom," consoled Matthew, but the man was not finished.

"Now she's gone, my heart with her, how am I meant to love the baby? How am I meant to do anything ever again? She took everything from me when she left me! Everything! I can't see for the darkness, can't hear for the silence, can't speak for the fact she can never hear my words! How am I meant to love someone that looks just like her? How am I meant to go about, day by day, when my daughter, her living replica, rips out my heart by simply standing there?"

Tom was standing now, the baby placed on the bed. She began to cry, loud and incessant, wailing at the top of her lungs.

"And she will never _shut up!_" Tom cried, falling to the floor, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes, almost as though to force the tears from spilling. "Why won't she just _shut up, _Matthew! She has no reason to cry!" Tom stood again, running his hands through his hair. "She has not just had the love of her life torn from her, she has not just been told that she'll never see her wife again! If anyone should be crying, it's me!" Tom banged at his chest with his fists, screaming at Matthew. "Me!"

Tom crumbled to the ground so that he knelt there, in a morbid parody of prayer, his head bent over as he sobbed. "Me," he repeated. "Me."

He couldn't hear for the silence, couldn't see for the tears, couldn't stand for the fear of falling without her to catch, couldn't speak for the pain.

"My dear man," Matthew said, falling to his knees alongside Tom, wrapping his arms around his midsection to hold him as he cried- hacking, choking sobs that wracked the Irishman's entire frame. "My dear, dear man."

"Couldn't it have been me?" begged Tom, turning to face Matthew with anguish torn across his face, the loss so deep. "Couldn't it have been me to go, and her to stay? She would have been so happy, to live. She was young, she could find another man to love her, it wouldn't have been so difficult. She would have been happy, Matthew!" Tom was screaming again, the yells strangled and painful as they ripped from his throat with emotion he thought was long spent. "She would have been so _happy_."

"Sybil would never have been happy without you, Tom," Matthew said, shaking his head. "If you died, I would be having the exact same conversation with her right now, consoling her, holding her hand."

"_Happy_," Tom choked out again, before Matthew hauled him up onto the bed, Tom sagging into the soft mattress that still bore her scent on the duvet. He pressed his nose deep into it, breathing in her smell of honey and spice, so Sybil.

"Get some rest," Matthew said, picking up the baby. Tom started suddenly, as though electrocuted.

"No," he implored. "Leave her here. Please, Matthew. Please, I don't give a damn if it's proper or not, just leave her here with me."

Matthew nodded, and pressed the baby into Tom's arms, his breath ghosting over her sweet black hair. "I'll see you for dinner?"

"No," Tom replied bluntly. "You probably won't see me again for the next week or so," he informed, voice detached, as though speaking from another land.

Matthew nodded slowly. "Best of dreams, Tom," he said, and shut the door quietly behind him, hearing the shuffle of blanket as father and daughter lay down in bed.

Tom stared at his baby. His baby stared at him.

Her eyes were so blue, bright and alive with that spark that had kept him so very awake at night. Her hair was the deepest of blacks, just like her mother's, already forming the tell-tale sign of waves.

"Hello," Tom whispered quietly into the seashell of her ear. "Hello, little one. Daddy's here now, nothing to fear. No one to fear."

Sybil entered the room quietly, startling Tom from his reveries. She was glowing white and pure, her eyes brighter and bluer than Tom had ever seen. He leapt from the bed, and into her arms. Her breath was cool and minty, her hair was long and black, her skin smoother than porcelain.

"Oh, my love," she whispered, wrapping her arms around him, hooking them behind his neck. He simply stared at her, couldn't speak for the fear of crying.

She was so beautiful, so pure. She was with the angels now, amongst those worthy of her perfection. Maybe he'd join her, maybe he wouldn't.

"Why did you leave me?" he begged of her, once he had regained the ability to speak. "Why didn't you stay for me, Sybil? We could have stood on top of the world together. We could have done anything we wanted to."

"We could have flown," she agreed, but turned to the side. Tom could see her tears, and he wanted to kill himself for making someone so beautiful cry. "But that was all the time I had, Tom. My candle burnt out."

"Will I ever see you again?" he begged, staring at her wildly. "Please- tell me! Will I ever see you after this?"

Sybil smiled, and pressed a hand to her cheek. "That all depends, Tom. But thinking of you meeting me makes me sad. And I do not want to be sad. Kiss me, Tom, to keep me going until we next meet."

He kissed her, and tasted only happiness in her mouth. Sybil was free now, free to fly. She had no one to hold her back.

"You ought to name her," she whispered to him after they broke apart. Tom turned to the little baby, ethereal on the bed, asleep.

"I have just the name for her," he admitted, but when he looked back at Sybil, she was gone.

Tom awoke on the bed, his baby in his arms, nuzzled against his cheek. At her father's first movements of waking, the little girl opened her eyes, staring at him innocently.

"I have just the name for her," he whispered, staring out at the spot where he had dreamt his wife stood, where she bathed the room in her glow. He pressed his baby to his chest, and kissed the top of her head, eyes never leaving where she had just stood.

"I love you, Sybil."


End file.
